How Many Murders Have Been Streamed on Facebook Live?

In April 2017, Steve Stephens in Cleveland uploaded video of himself shooting and killing a 74-year-old grandfather. After he was done, the killer logged on to the social network to talk about his actions. Facebook claimed it took a long time for the video to be removed because users didn’t flag it as offensive for over an hour.

How Does Facebook Live Work?

Facebook’s live video streaming feature became publicly available in January 2016. Anyone with a Facebook account can access the function at the top of their news feed, simply by selecting “Live Video” from the dropdown menu. A three-second countdown begins before the Facebook user can begin filming live, and anyone can watch if they have selected the audience as public and not just for connected friends. Facebook Live broadcasts can last up to four hours.

New artificial intelligence technology could provide “text mining”, “image mining” and “video mining” in which machine learning algorithms try to automatically detect any sensitive words or behavior in digital content. Software that filters and sorts content could reduce the amount of human work required.

What do you think Facebook should do? Are livestreamed murders and suicides just the future of our connected society?